Chickens for 10-20 years or more? Pull up a rockin' chair and lay some wisdom on us!

[chickachee]

Quote:
Quote: Thanks for your help! I have been "copping a feel" of the girls' legs the last few days trying to see if their scales were raised. They weren't, but that still didn't satisfy me that everything was ok. Your answers helped a lot....

Sheila

 

[galefrances]

Thank you again Fred. I have a friend who works at the local feed store & he told me that they carry oats, alfalfa pellets, cracked corn & few other things. My hope is I can get them in small qaunities at first to see what the hens like. I have been reading the fermented food forum & want to try that. But since I only have 4 hens I don't need large quanities. But if they like it I don't mind buying in larger quanities and storing it. I assume as long as its in tight containers it will last. ANd with the way feed prices are going up I rather buy ahead as long as it will keep. And I have Mothers ACV on my shopping list. Hopefully I can find it around here somewhere.

Try Wegman's in the organic aisle for the ACV.

 

[galefrances]

Just for the record, I never could understand the ladder roosts. Why bother? They all want the top rail, and like Bee said, try to get one off the roost on those things. Yeah. I'm too short too. Plus, they take up WAY more space than anything in there should. I donno, I'm not an OT in chickens but I am an OT in common sense. At times. Maybe not always.

Hmm, evidently I'm an idiot or at least lack common sense. I did some research before my husband modified the shed into our coop. And quite frankly I had never seen anything other than a ladder roost, except where they only had one roost. I have two, in ladder style. My chickens use both roosts and a few roost in the rafter above that. I figured it was a type of pecking order as to which roost they chose, the higher ones being the top of the pecking order. Maybe not. I also have a poop board underneath filled with PDZ. Best thing I did in that coop. Takes me 5 min. to clean it up with a kitty litter scoop. It's built a little higher than waist level because I have a problem with my back. This way I don't have to bend. I haven't had to get a chicken off the roost yet, but I hadn't thought of that. Now you've made me think. Oddly enough, my husband had actually built the roosts in a box shape and I made him take it apart and do the ladder style because I thought it had to be that way, based on what I'd seen. I don't think I'm going to mention what you and Bee said. I don't want to give him any more ammunition. He's always telling me I may be smart, but I have no common sense. Guess he's right.

 

[MOChickenShoes]

so here's a random question that i'm almost embarrassed to ask. i discovered today that at least one of my pullets has been snacking on paint chips... several years ago i painted my house, and decided at the last minute to throw a coat on my back stairs as well while i had the paint sprayer. didn't use any primer on the stairs, and just half assed it in general. i've regretted it ever since, as the paint lasted all of about 6 months before it started peeling off (just talking about those stairs to be clear).

i live in the suburbs, and have just an average sized suburban yard. my coop isn't huge, probably not much bigger than the "cutesy" coops that are the bane of the OT's existance

. however i only have 4 pullets total, have a separate pen that we keep attached to the coop to add to their run area (it's a raised coop so they have all the area under the coop as well), and i let them out to forage the entirety of the back yard almost every evening for at least an hour or 2 before they coop up for the night.

so anyway, one of their spots they usually stop at on their nightly sweeps of the back yard is under those stairs, where there's quite a bit of vegetation grown up since i can't get the mower under there typically. well apparently at least one (though logic tells me probably all of them do to some degree) of the girls has been pecking around on the stairs themselves, pecking off flecks of paint (latex based, if i remember correctly). should i be concerned about this? i mean obviously i'm sure it's not boosting their health, but is it a huge risk for them? could it transfer anything harmful to their eggs? they haven't started laying yet, but they're combs and waddles have been in hyper-drive the last few weeks so i'm assuming they'll start very soon. they're all around 20 weeks old. again, they're by no means eating paint all day. they only have free run of the back yard for a couple hours per day, and they don't necessarily spend a huge chunk of that time focusing on the stairs. it's just one of several of their normal areas they hit up. i'm kinda at a loss as to what my options could be...i could power wash the rest of the paint off (which really i should have done years ago), but now i think all it'd do is just litter the ground with chips, creating a huge smorgasbord for the chickens. there'd be no way to do it cleanly. i don't know...thoughts/comments? feel free to infer that i'm a dummy for not having the foresight to see this problem before i got the girls, as i'm already marinating in that thought .

 

[Rhoise]

so here's a random question that i'm almost embarrassed to ask. i discovered today that at least one of my pullets has been snacking on paint chips... several years ago i painted my house, and decided at the last minute to throw a coat on my back stairs as well while i had the paint sprayer. didn't use any primer on the stairs, and just half assed it in general. i've regretted it ever since, as the paint lasted all of about 6 months before it started peeling off (j

Saw this thread when i was getting ready to paint

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/633833/what-kind-of-paint-is-safe#post_8503073

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/633833/what-kind-of-paint-is-safe#

 

[Beekissed]

Quote:

I wouldn't either!

One of these days you will want to examine or catch the chickens in your flock without too much stress, chasing, time, etc. involved and you might want to just waltz in after dark and pluck one off the roost...this is the only way I try to catch a chicken. I watch YouTube videos of people actually teaching folks how to process(and doing it all wrong) and they start out by chasing a chicken all around a run....you'd think the people watching would, from that juncture, know that these people know nothing about chickens at all.

 

[Beekissed]

so here's a random question that i'm almost embarrassed to ask. i discovered today that at least one of my pullets has been snacking on paint chips... several years ago i painted my house, and decided at the last minute to throw a coat on my back stairs as well while i had the paint sprayer. didn't use any primer on the stairs, and just half assed it in general. i've regretted it ever since, as the paint lasted all of about 6 months before it started peeling off (just talking about those stairs to be clear).

i live in the suburbs, and have just an average sized suburban yard. my coop isn't huge, probably not much bigger than the "cutesy" coops that are the bane of the OT's existance

. however i only have 4 pullets total, have a separate pen that we keep attached to the coop to add to their run area (it's a raised coop so they have all the area under the coop as well), and i let them out to forage the entirety of the back yard almost every evening for at least an hour or 2 before they coop up for the night.

so anyway, one of their spots they usually stop at on their nightly sweeps of the back yard is under those stairs, where there's quite a bit of vegetation grown up since i can't get the mower under there typically. well apparently at least one (though logic tells me probably all of them do to some degree) of the girls has been pecking around on the stairs themselves, pecking off flecks of paint (latex based, if i remember correctly). should i be concerned about this? i mean obviously i'm sure it's not boosting their health, but is it a huge risk for them? could it transfer anything harmful to their eggs? they haven't started laying yet, but they're combs and waddles have been in hyper-drive the last few weeks so i'm assuming they'll start very soon. they're all around 20 weeks old. again, they're by no means eating paint all day. they only have free run of the back yard for a couple hours per day, and they don't necessarily spend a huge chunk of that time focusing on the stairs. it's just one of several of their normal areas they hit up. i'm kinda at a loss as to what my options could be...i could power wash the rest of the paint off (which really i should have done years ago), but now i think all it'd do is just litter the ground with chips, creating a huge smorgasbord for the chickens. there'd be no way to do it cleanly. i don't know...thoughts/comments? feel free to infer that i'm a dummy for not having the foresight to see this problem before i got the girls, as i'm already marinating in that thought .

Yeah, I'd just scrape or power wash that peeling paint and repaint the steps. After scraping the paint, I'd just pull those weeds and put some black weed suppression cloth under those steps and cover it in gravel or that pretty volcanic landscaping rock. End of problem and end of unsightly weeds or scruffy paint on the steps.

And, no, you are not a dummy and the paint probably won't cause too much of a problem for your birds...just fix it and you won't have to worry.

 

[MOChickenShoes]

thanks bee, i'll throw that on my honey do list for the weekend . that is if the rain lets up, we've got the remnants of Isaac rolling through at the moment.

 

[Beekissed]

I was going to suggest that but didn't want to sound sexist...

 

[galefrances]

I wouldn't either!

One of these days you will want to examine or catch the chickens in your flock without too much stress, chasing, time, etc. involved and you might want to just waltz in after dark and pluck one off the roost...this is the only way I try to catch a chicken. I watch YouTube videos of people actually teaching folks how to process(and doing it all wrong) and they start out by chasing a chicken all around a run....you'd think the people watching would, from that juncture, know that these people know nothing about chickens at all.

Well, I thought that I'd make pets of my chickens and be their friend. Then they would climb right up on my lap in their fancy diapers and I would have no need to catch them.(joking) But then I found this site and learned the hard honest truth. They're chickens. Or like my husband said when I was making curtains for the nesting boxes(not joking).....Are you kidding me?? They're chickens! (clean version) But, on a serious note, I never did think about having to get one off a roost. Thanks for the practical insight